Despite its western emphasis, the Interior Department from its outset
conducted major programs of nationwide application. One such program,
which built up to enormous magnitude and consequence in the 1880s, was
the distribution of pensions to veterans of the Union armies and navy.
In 1885 there were a million and a half such veterans, and they had
discovered that their national organization, the Grand Army of the
Republic, had uses beyond the purely fraternal. As Maj. Gen. Benjamin F.
Butler phrased it, if the old soldiers acted in unison, they could "make
politicians dance like peas on a hot shovel." [21] Reflecting both the awesome political
power of the G.A.R. and the enduring gratitude of the postwar generation
toward the men in blue who had saved the Union, increasingly liberal
pension legislation emerged from Congress. After one especially generous
act a commentator marveled, "141,466 men who had not realized that they
were disabled until the Government offered a premium of a thousand
dollars or more for the discovery of aches and disabilities, made
application." [22]

Interior's Pension Bureau administered the pension laws. By 1890 it
numbered more than 6,000 agents, medical examiners, and clerks. About
one-third of these served in Washington, domiciled in a huge brick
edifice on Judiciary Square designed and built by Quartermaster General
Montgomery C. Meigs in 1882-85. ("It's too bad the damn thing is
fireproof," Gen. William T. Sherman reputedly grumped of "Meigs' Old Red
Barn." [23] Now much admired, it houses
the National Building Museum.) Undermanned, buffeted by political winds,
hounded by swarms of pension attorneys, tormented by fraudulent
claimants, the bureau's staff nevertheless earned an overall reputation
for honesty and faithful attention to duty.

The successive Commissioners of Pensions were usually disabled
veterans, and some were highly political. The legless and voluble
"Corporal" James Tanner was especially brazen in his efforts to increase
pensions administratively, "though I may wring from the hearts of some
the prayer, 'God help the surplus!'" A critic marveled at "the style in
which he mounted the housetops and summoned the people of the United
States to watch him while he made the wheels go round, or while he
pulled a string and dangled the Secretary of the Interior at the other
end." [24] Secretary John W. Noble
(1889-93), himself a popular G.A.R. leader, dangled on the string no
longer than it took to get rid of one of the most irrepressibly
insubordinate figures in American political history.

Interior's fourth major bureau was the Patent Office. Reflecting the
burgeoning technology of the industrial revolution, the protection of
inventions by government patents assumed growing importance in the last
half of the 19th century. By 1890 patent officials received more than
41,000 applications and issued more than 26,000 patents each year. [25]

Like other bureau heads, the Commissioner of Patents, often a former
member of Congress, occupied his office by reason of political
qualifications. But he presided over a corps of some 500 patent
examiners and clerks who owed their appointments and promotions to
competitive examination. The Patent Office, in fact, led most government
bureaus in succumbing to the civil service merit system, for the highly
technical nature of the work demanded trained professionals rather than
patronage-seekers. Rapid personnel turnover aggravated by low salaries
and a staff too small to keep the backlog of applications at manageable
proportions constituted the chief problems. Even so, proceeding
methodically and unspectacularly according to clearly established law
and policy, the Patent Office maintained a record of quiet competence
and consistent accomplishment.

From its inception Interior adopted and nurtured activities that
expanded to justify the creation of separate agencies, inspiring the
sobriquet "Mother of Departments." The agricultural division of the
Patent Office became the Department of Agriculture in 1882 and a full
cabinet agency in 1889. The Bureau of Labor, established in Interior in
1884, became the Department of Labor in 1888. With other components,
including Interior's Census Bureau, it won cabinet status in 1903 as the
Department of Commerce and Labor (split into two cabinet departments in
1913). The Commerce Department inherited the Patent Office in 1925. The
Interstate Commerce Commission reported to the Secretary of the Interior
for the first two years of its life, 1887-89, before becoming an
independent agency. In 1930 the Bureau of Pensions went to the new
Veterans Administration, which became the Department of Veterans Affairs
in 1989. In 1977 several Interior functions helped form another new
cabinet agency, the Department of Energy.

The forerunner of today's Department of Education had a long career
in Interior. In 1867 Congress created an independent entity of the same
name to collect and disseminate information on the progress of
education. Two years later it was placed under Interior and designated
the Bureau of Education. In 1929 it was demoted from a "bureau" to an
"office" to counter any impression that it might have or seek direct
responsibility for this primary concern of state and local government.
The Secretary of the Interior's annual report that year took pains to
note that the Office of Education was "primarily an establishment for
educational research and promotion" with "no administrative functions
except those connected with the expenditure of the funds appropriated by
the Federal Government for the assistance of colleges of agriculture and
the mechanic arts in the several States and Territories, and those
connected with the education, support, and medical relief of the natives
of Alaska." [26] Soon afterward Alaskan
native services moved to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and in 1939 the
Office of Education left Interior for what later became (in 1953) the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. This in turn spawned the
Department of Education in 1979.

From its first days Interior bore a special relationship to the
District of Columbia--one involving the department in activities that
must have made some Secretaries feel like the "Lord High Everything
Else" of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. Among the Secretary's
federal city responsibilities, at one time or another, were public
buildings (1849-67 and 1933-39), parks (1849-67 and 1933 to date),
police (1849-73), jail (1849-72), a street railway linking Washington
and Georgetown (1862-1910), a railroad bridge across the Potomac
(1863-67), and operation of the city's water supply (1859-67). He became
involved in the capital's health, education, and welfare through
oversight of the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf
and Dumb, now Gallaudet College (1857.1940); the Columbia Hospital for
Women (1866-81); Freedmen's Hospital (1874-1940); the National Hospital
for the Insane, or St. Elizabeths (1852-1940); and Howard University
(1867-1940). The Architect of the Capitol, charged with construction and
maintenance of the United States Capitol and related buildings and
grounds, reported to the Secretary of the Interior in 1851-53,
1862-1902, and 1921-22.

Another early Interior function anticipated a major role of the
Smithsonian Institution. The Patent Office had a commodious hall for
displaying patent models, and in 1854 Congress authorized its custody
and care of the natural specimens and artifacts from Charles Wilkes's
South Seas expedition. This collection was supplemented by objects from
other government-backed explorations and by such national treasures as
the Declaration of Independence. A series of acts beginning in 1857
contemplated transfer of this incipient national museum to the
Smithsonian (established in 1846), but the shift was not completed until
1879.